oooh ! Belgian now US citizen - we just had an Aldi open and I immediately bought some Lebkuchen. One store has Lotus - Biscoff cookies. How I miss the speculaas from Vermeiren in Elversele. And I remember the kandij suiker on strings grandma used to have in her kitchen. We just ate them off the cords. Tried to bake my own long ago, but they did not come out well. I must try this recipe LOL thank you so much !
One of my fondest memories of a trip last year to Brussels was going to Maison Dandoy and ordering a box of one each of every single type of cookies they have! Many were variations on speculaas, and all were delicious. I bought a bag of "cassonade" at a French grocery store later in the trip, excited to try making true speculaas at home, only to discover that it was made from cane, not beet, sugar. Regardless, I look forward to trying these!
As kids in Michigan my brothers and I ate carloads of Windmill cookies from a Dutch bakery in Grand Rapids. Don't remember but it was clearly a Dutch name. 50 years later I found them in North Carolina for a few years - sadly no longer. I suspect they were Speculaas light - we loved them and the brief revival was a treat for me.
Oh my goodness. Speculaas and Biscoff are totally different things! But now that you’ve warned me I’ll be polite when someone inevitably says something like this to me. And Happy St. Nicholas in a few days!
Beet sugar is mentioned as being needed for Kandij sugar. Is regular USA brown sugar an acceptable substitute? I am guessing that regular white cane sugar would change the flavor.
Was very surprised to see this article as I've been working on a YouTube video on the history of speculaas/oos. I was getting a bit annoyed at the internet's insistence that one's Dutch, the other one Belgian whereas I (growing up in Belgium) I always saw the two as interchangeable (I assumed the -oos was due to our local slang, the East bank of the Scheldt has a habit of turning "a" into "o" sounds)
One takeaway from my research was that the division "big amount vs tiny amount" of spice is not a Belgo-Dutch division but more a city vs country one. I did note that the kandij vs bastard sugar does seem to be a pretty hard North-South divide. Still looking for a Dutch baker who uses kandij.
Anyway, thanks for all your articles, they've been a great help for me! I have it on good authority that your most recent book is waiting from me under a tree.
Do you know of a good recipe to make a homemade version of Kandij sugar? I hear you that it’s not the same as the industrial version but given that sugar breaks down at 160 C which is easily achievable in the home kitchen I wonder if it might be possible to do something approximate. Your description of the black syrup also reminds me of Vietnamese caramel sauce, used in savory cooking: https://www.vietworldkitchen.com/blog/2007/10/caramel-sauce.html.
I'm Dutch living in Ireland for 45+ year... and still love Speculaas (as it will always be for me!). Thanks for the memories and the wonderful history of Speculaas. Your depth of knowledge and the details in your article are fantastic! Thank you!
Wow, I loved this post. I found it on my Substack recommendations and had to click on it. I've been living in Belgium for the past 2.5 years and never knew about the origins of this biscuit. I subscribed already :)
Thank you for the history and recipe! have made speculaas for Sinterklaas Day several years now to celebrate my late husband’s heritage. I live in Canada, so have had to merge several recipes to get one that works for me (using volume measures, for example rather than weight). I bought some wooden molds online during the pandemic from a Dutch store in Holland, Michigan. This year I was finally successful and proud of the results.
I buy Speculoos at Trader Joe’s. We have two every morning dunked in coffee. They’re great! They’ve called caramelized cinnamon spiced Belgian cookies and they come from Belgium.
oooh ! Belgian now US citizen - we just had an Aldi open and I immediately bought some Lebkuchen. One store has Lotus - Biscoff cookies. How I miss the speculaas from Vermeiren in Elversele. And I remember the kandij suiker on strings grandma used to have in her kitchen. We just ate them off the cords. Tried to bake my own long ago, but they did not come out well. I must try this recipe LOL thank you so much !
One of my fondest memories of a trip last year to Brussels was going to Maison Dandoy and ordering a box of one each of every single type of cookies they have! Many were variations on speculaas, and all were delicious. I bought a bag of "cassonade" at a French grocery store later in the trip, excited to try making true speculaas at home, only to discover that it was made from cane, not beet, sugar. Regardless, I look forward to trying these!
As kids in Michigan my brothers and I ate carloads of Windmill cookies from a Dutch bakery in Grand Rapids. Don't remember but it was clearly a Dutch name. 50 years later I found them in North Carolina for a few years - sadly no longer. I suspect they were Speculaas light - we loved them and the brief revival was a treat for me.
Oh my goodness. Speculaas and Biscoff are totally different things! But now that you’ve warned me I’ll be polite when someone inevitably says something like this to me. And Happy St. Nicholas in a few days!
Beet sugar is mentioned as being needed for Kandij sugar. Is regular USA brown sugar an acceptable substitute? I am guessing that regular white cane sugar would change the flavor.
Merry Christmas dear Regula xxx
Was very surprised to see this article as I've been working on a YouTube video on the history of speculaas/oos. I was getting a bit annoyed at the internet's insistence that one's Dutch, the other one Belgian whereas I (growing up in Belgium) I always saw the two as interchangeable (I assumed the -oos was due to our local slang, the East bank of the Scheldt has a habit of turning "a" into "o" sounds)
One takeaway from my research was that the division "big amount vs tiny amount" of spice is not a Belgo-Dutch division but more a city vs country one. I did note that the kandij vs bastard sugar does seem to be a pretty hard North-South divide. Still looking for a Dutch baker who uses kandij.
Anyway, thanks for all your articles, they've been a great help for me! I have it on good authority that your most recent book is waiting from me under a tree.
Do you know of a good recipe to make a homemade version of Kandij sugar? I hear you that it’s not the same as the industrial version but given that sugar breaks down at 160 C which is easily achievable in the home kitchen I wonder if it might be possible to do something approximate. Your description of the black syrup also reminds me of Vietnamese caramel sauce, used in savory cooking: https://www.vietworldkitchen.com/blog/2007/10/caramel-sauce.html.
I'm Dutch living in Ireland for 45+ year... and still love Speculaas (as it will always be for me!). Thanks for the memories and the wonderful history of Speculaas. Your depth of knowledge and the details in your article are fantastic! Thank you!
Wow, I loved this post. I found it on my Substack recommendations and had to click on it. I've been living in Belgium for the past 2.5 years and never knew about the origins of this biscuit. I subscribed already :)
Spekulatius! As a German, I love this stuff :)
Thank you for the history and recipe! have made speculaas for Sinterklaas Day several years now to celebrate my late husband’s heritage. I live in Canada, so have had to merge several recipes to get one that works for me (using volume measures, for example rather than weight). I bought some wooden molds online during the pandemic from a Dutch store in Holland, Michigan. This year I was finally successful and proud of the results.
I buy Speculoos at Trader Joe’s. We have two every morning dunked in coffee. They’re great! They’ve called caramelized cinnamon spiced Belgian cookies and they come from Belgium.